Chapter 17
My army had rapidly increased the production of the base, or had we just been in Trinton that long? It didn’t really matter. Several soldiers wandered over to us, curious about the new army we had brought back.
I asked the soldiers to disperse among the new addition and explain how the Void worked to our new army. I headed into the new building that seemed to be a command station, and stepped into the elevator along with Jenna and Lilly.
I pressed the top floor button, and the doors closed. I noticed Lilly was giving me a strange look. “What?”
“Jinx, I was just thinking. When you were pinned by that Chimera, why didn’t you activate your flaming arm?”
I frowned. I had completely forgotten about my arm’s special condition. Out of curiosity, I pulled the necklace off of my neck. My arm heated up slightly, and my glove shimmered. After a moment of staring, I shrugged. “Maybe I ran out of fuel?”
Lilly was giving my glove a strange look, so I instinctively turned so that it was hidden behind my back. I tossed the necklace to Lilly, and she snatched it out of the air and stuffed it into her pocket. The doors dinged, interrupting anything else she could have said.
I breathed a sigh of relief. It could have been really hard for the author to explain how my magical arm suddenly went poof without screwing up the plotline. Wait, what was I just thinking about? Huh, oh well.
We all entered the top floor of the station. It was a large white room, and the walls were all glass. There was a large round table in the center, with several chairs surrounding it. One end of the room branched out into a smaller office with the name “Commander Jinx” on the top of the door.
“Hey, check it out! I get my own office!” I crowed, and entered through the door
Lilly and Jenna stayed in the main room, inspecting the chairs and adding their own touches to the room. (After Lilly told Jenna how to work the Void.)
I looked at the closed door, and smiled. I was rather surprised that Lilly and Jenna were even managing to get along, much less redesign a room without being at each other’s throats. They were polar opposites.
I turned back around to face a hooded figure. There was a quick glint from under their hood as the figure grinned and threw something at me. I jumped out of the way, and it sunk a quarter inch into the wall. The figure bowed, and a dark line formed above him. He fell backwards into a gaping black hole with swirls of red and orange dancing through its middle, and the portal snapped shut.
“You have no idea how hard that stunt was to pull,” a fading voice muttered, and I was alone again.
I carefully turned to the object embedded in the wall and pulled it out. It was a pointed stick with a little piece of paper tied to it. I sighed. Whoever this Unknown Man was, he could get a better way to deliver his letters.
I glanced down at the piece of paper.
Hello again, Mr. Jinx.
I trust you have found my delivery man amusing? You must admit that the stunt we pulled was …exciting. It would take you a year to learn to do that. Maybe. Anyways, we’ve got a problem. You screwed up…again. And this time, it isn’t anything minor like nailing an office assistant in the head with a paperweight. You’ve managed to screw up the Void itself. As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, time in the Void isn’t working. It’s passing, although at a slower rate than any other world or plane in existence.
If you don’t fix it, I’m going to have to quickly remove you from its presence, and that would take all the fun away. I do love a good game of life or death chess with an inept opponent that I will most certainly defeat. I suppose I should also mention that some heavy stuff is coming your way, so try not to get killed in a boring manner. Hell, if you can stay alive, I’ll even tell you why your blowtorch of an arm stopped working.
Before I blow your room up, there’s one last thing I have to tell you. Look out your window. See that mob of unorganized soldiers milling about? Yeah, good luck defeating my highly trained army of super soldiers. Heck, the only reason I haven’t blown them to the final world they’ll ever visit is because you could just Leap back into the time I blew them up and cause a little trouble for my army. Anyways, I really recommend getting some brains to lead that army. You certainly don’t have them, and I don’t think your friends are…balanced enough for the job. Just a friendly tip. Now, here’s that friendly explosion I promised you.
I lunged for the door and threw it open. Too late I realized my mistake. There was a small red button plastered to my door knob, and that particular doorknob was currently speeding for a very flat wall.
“Crap.”
The resulting explosion…blew a quarter inch hole in the wall? I sighed. I had to give it to him; The Unknown Man had me there. I quickly fixed the wall, and exited the room without giving it a second look.
The door clicked shut. If I had still been in the room, I would have seen a thin black line form, and a portal swirling with red and orange tear open in my office. A figure with a glove that looked strikingly similar to mine entered the room and picked up the note. He shook his head in disappointment that I would be stupid enough to leave it lying around. The note disappeared into a little black wormhole. With a final glance around, he stepped backwards and tumbled into the portal.
Meanwhile, I was considering the recommendation that I had just been given. It was oblivious that the Unknown Man was telling me to get some generals for my army. For military questions, there was only one person to go to.
“Lilly, what is the planet with the most history in war?” I asked.
She thought for a moment. “A planet called Dirt. I think they haven’t even had five hundred years in complete peace. They had a little in the very beginning of their time, but after that, they slowly degraded until they were in a constant state of war. Last I heard, they were all killing each other because some guy in power didn’t like another guy in power. It’s pretty stupid if you ask me, but why do you ask?”
“Oh, no reason. I didn’t know that you knew so much about other planet’s history. When did you get the time to learn that?” I asked.
Lilly growled at me. “War school. The Pisces Empire was thinking about blowing them into the next world before they figured out how to escape their universe.”
I raised my eyebrows in interest. “How could they possibly do that? I thought only the Pisces Empire had the power to travel between time pockets.”
Lilly sighed. “You’re right, they are. However, the people on Dirt are extremely dangerous because of their ingenious solutions to problems. They are extremely headstrong. They plow through problems like nothing, and are extremely persistent. We’ve been watching them for some time now, and it seems that they are getting rather close to their goal. The other problem they’ve got is that the people of Dirt are a plague. Once they set foot somewhere, they automatically decide it’s theirs and swarm the place. They reproduce so quickly it’s damn near impossible to kill them all. So we’ve just been watching them so we don’t give them a reason to try to smash through their universe any faster.”
I nodded, and walked over to the elevator. I pressed the bottom floor, and the elevator dinged. After a moment, the doors opened, and I walked in. The doors shut, and the floor shook slightly as I began to descend.
“How the hell will I find when to go to Dirt and get some good generals? And what am I supposed to do about the Void? Ugh, this is such a pain. I wouldn’t complain if the answer was to fly out of nowhere and nail me in the face right now…”
A sharp pain appeared in the back of my head, and I turned around. A thick book was lying on the ground with a yellow sticky note on it. I managed to catch a glimpse of a thin black line before it disappeared, and rolled my eyes.
“I’m not sure if this guy is my enemy or not, but he’s a dick.”
I picked up the book and read the note.
You said you wouldn’t mind if this hit you in the head, so Merry Christmas. I really shouldn’t be giving you this, but I like this ne
xt part. Anyways, I recommend the two generals that I’ve highlighted. These two are some of the greatest in Dirt’s history, and they’re a lot smarter than you are. Try to get a picture of that, would you? You think you aren’t too shabby, but just look at these geniuses. They easily toppled armies much greater than their own. And they didn’t have any fancy gloves like you do. It was all sheer skill.
I peeled the sticky note off the book and stuffed it into my pocket. “The History of Dirt, huh? Interesting.”
I flipped the cover open, and scanned the contents. Sure enough, two names were highlighted. On the right side of the names, there were hastily written dates. I noticed that the writing was probably even worse than my own sloppy handwriting, and chuckled. I guess if I really needed a way to defeat the Unknown Man, I could just challenge him to an artistic writing contest.
I closed the book, and the door dinged open. I exited the elevator and headed over to the Grid. I told the nearest soldier that I would be back briefly, and to inform Lilly and my new companion, Jenna.
Then I enlarged the Grid, and continued enlarging until small names and numbers began to appear on the planes. After they were large enough to read, I scratched my head. I knew there was a search that I could somehow access, the only problem that I had was remembering how on earth to open it. Those stupid documentaries would have been a lot more useful if I had them with me right now.
“Keyboard.” I tried.
Nothing happened, and I sighed. “Help.”
Again, silence.
“You’re a useless piece of dirt.” I grumbled.
The Grid emitted a light sound, and the planes spun rapidly until they came to rest on a plane labeled “Dirt”
I kept my mouth shut so to avoid screwing it up, and looked at the book on Dirt’s history.
“All righty. So where is it…”
I scanned over the book again, and located the name and date I needed. I found the correct dot on the plane and tapped it.
“Ok then. 52 BC, Julius Caesar. Here I come!”